News

Owners banned from keeping horses for ten years

A WOMAN’S three horses have been confiscated after they were among 13 tethered on grass verges.

Edith Ellen Smith was one of two people banned from keeping horses for ten years by York magistrates in separate cases.

Phil Brown, prosecuting for the RSPCA, said inspectors from the animal charity had to steer their car round animals when they were called to Main Street, Thornton-le-Clay, north east of York, on June 19 last year.

Among horses on the road was a stallion belonging to Edith Ellen Smith, 32, of Osbaldwick Lane Caravan Site, York. She had two other stallions among the 13. None had water or shelter or supplementary food.

A vet said all three of her stallions had liver damage and large numbers of internal worms as well as external health problems but all had “reasonable body condition”.

Mitigating, Andrew Craven said the horses were on their way to Seamer Horse Fair near Scarborough and Smith had left them in the care of relatives while she was called away to deal with a family bereavement.

She had wormed them and could not have known about the liver damage without taking a blood sample.

Smith pleaded guilty to animal neglect and not tethering them properly. She was ordered to do 120 hours’ unpaid work and pay the RSPCA £456 in costs and a £60 statutory surcharge.

Separately, general scrap dealer Frederick Mckenzie Smith, 33, of Carlton Caravan Site, south of Selby, was convicted in his absence of neglecting his horse tethered in a field in Carlton from October 1 to October 11 last year. After his trial, he was arrested on warrant and sentenced to 100 hours’ unpaid work and ordered to pay the RSPCA £1,198 in costs, plus a £60 statutory surcharge. He had his horse confiscated and got a ten-year ban on keeping horses.

Mr Brown said the RSPCA visited his horse three times from October 1 to 11 because they were concerned about its welfare and that it could damage itself on the heavy chain and metal stake it was tethered with.

They removed the animal on welfare grounds on October 11, having seen no evidence it had been watered or given supplementary feed. Smith then came forward.

According to a vet, the horse was 18 months old and had so many internal worms its health was at risk.

Frederick Smith, who was unrepresented, claimed the horse was two and a half years old, and therefore different tethering guidelines applied to the ones given by the RSPCA.

He also said he had given it food and water when he had visited it regularly and stood over it while it drank and ate so that the water and food were not taken by wild horses.